Althouse

Propagandists have fomented disgust to dehumanize Jewish people as vermin; Black people as subhuman apes; Indigenous people as “savages”; immigrants as “animals” unworthy of protection; and members of the LGBTQ community as sexual deviants and “predators” who prey upon children.... 

People who are trying to outlaw gender-affirming care for transgender kids and purge pro-gay books from library shelves have stirred up disgust by invoking the specter of sexual “grooming”; others have made the same accusations against those speaking out against such legislative efforts, and some have used the idea to fuel disinformation about the cause of scattered pediatric monkeypox cases. The manufactured grooming mythology has spurred another round of moral disgust and outrage.... 

Researchers have estimated that transgender people are more than fourfold more likely to be the victims of violent crime than their cisgender counterparts, and while not a direct link to violence, other scientists have linked disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism to a higher opposition to transgender rights.....  

So if your criticism of something you don't like elicits disgust, you can, in fairly short order, be accused of inciting violence. I certainly have been seeing this form of reasoning, which, as Taibbi said, "massively expand[s] the purview of things [some people believe] they can censor." It's so threatening to free speech values, especially when biased censors are deciding which speech fomented the disgust they find... disgusting.  

Here's Christopher Rufo's response to the Scientific American article: "The 'Stochastic Terror' Lie/The Left’s latest gambit for suppressing speech is built on preposterous grounds." 

What does the word "stochastic" mean? OED: "Randomly determined; that follows some random probability distribution or pattern, so that its behaviour may be analysed statistically but not predicted precisely."

The idea of "stochastic terrorism" seems designed to blame someone as a leader of a group when there is no group. And the "leader" is a speaker who has only stimulated the beliefs and emotions that may cause some listeners to decide individually and on their own to take action.  

She is quoted in "Sundance Liked Her Documentary on Terrorism, Until Muslim Critics Didn’t/The film festival gave Meg Smaker’s 'Jihad Rehab' a coveted spot in its 2022 lineup, but apologized after an outcry over her race and her approach" (NYT).

Advised by a PR firm to apologize, the director Meg Smaker said "What was I apologizing for? For trusting my audience to make up their own mind?"

Smaker spent 16 months inside a Saudi rehabilitation facility interviewing former Guantánamo detainees.

The attacks came from what  the NYT characterizes as "the left":

Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.

The filmmaker Assia Boundaoui, said: "To see my language and the homelands of folks in my community used as backdrops for white savior tendencies is nauseating. The talk is all empathy, but the energy is Indiana Jones."

Obscurantism and Obscurationism describe the practice of deliberately presenting information in an imprecise, abstruse manner designed to limit further inquiry and understanding. There are two historical and intellectual denotations of Obscurantism: (1) the deliberate restriction of knowledge—opposition to disseminating knowledge; and (2) deliberate obscurity—a recondite literary or artistic style, characterized by deliberate vagueness.....

In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term obscurantist to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. In the 19th century, in distinguishing the varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern philosophical skepticism, Friedrich Nietzsche said: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence."

The OED defines the word simply and unobscurely: "Opposition to inquiry, enlightenment, or reform." 

Perhaps the word in French feels more conversational. I suspect that it has been chosen in order to make it possible to discuss the problem without speaking of religion. You secularize the idea, so that the set of things you're referring to includes some nonreligious things — like superstition and hostility to science and free inquiry — and excludes some religion that is rational enough to accept scientific inquiry and peaceful coexistence.

It's interesting, the differences that matter to people, the endless quest to distinguish alligators from crocodiles and psychopaths from sociopaths, but what I wanted to know was the difference between vandalism and terrorism. 

What is the word "vandalism" doing in that headline, which specifies 2 things — Molotov cocktail and graffiti? Is there some additional thing that was done that justifies putting "vandalism" in that sequence of words? A firebombing is more than vandalism, and the graffiti says "If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either," so there was a specific intent to terrorize people over their political beliefs and actions.  

I blogged that article last night — here — and I didn't say much, but I did shift to the word "terrorists" after quoting the newspaper's word "vandalism." (I wrote "The terrorists left graffiti....")

To say "vandalism" is to minimize the seriousness of this crime. Ironically, it also elevates the target, since the older meanings of "vandalism" highlight the destruction of things that are "beautiful, venerable, or worthy of preservation" (OED). 

This morning, I'm seeing that The New York Times is using the word "vandalism" (the headline — "Anti-Abortion Group in Wisconsin Is Hit by Arson, Authorities Say" — uses the word "arson"):

The headquarters of an anti-abortion group in Madison, Wis., was set on fire on Sunday morning in an act of vandalism that included the attempted use of a Molotov cocktail and graffiti that read “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either,” according to the police.

Why call it "an act of vandalism"? That seems to ascribe a motivation to whoever did this — a motivation of either random destruction or irreverence. But, based on the graffiti, the motive was to terrorize. If you hesitate to say "terrorism," refrain from talking about the motive. Don't downgrade it by calling it "vandalism."

And ask yourself, NYT, if a pro-abortion group were firebombed and graffiti'd with an equivalent threat, would you not easily and comfortably go to the strong word "terrorism"?

"... from the spectators’ gallery above the House floor. Five representatives were wounded. My father ran over from the Senate and wrested a 38-caliber pistol from one of the shooters. My brother Kevin, then in second grade, was traumatized by my mom’s terror as she stood in the kitchen, frozen, before she got word that my dad was OK... I thought about this listening to Dominique Luzuriaga, Officer Rivera’s widow, give her eulogy through sobs... Officer Rivera and his 27-year-old partner, Wilbert Mora, died answering a 911 call from a mother in Harlem who said her son had verbally threatened her. They walked down a hall in the apartment and the son jumped out and opened fire, fatally wounding both officers... [Rivera] was the class clown, but he got a serious crush on Dominique in grade school. Teachers had to sit them apart so they could focus...  When she was called to Harlem Hospital, she said, 'Walking up those steps, seeing everybody staring at me, was the scariest moment I’ve experienced.' Standing by her dead husband, wrapped in sheets, she told him: 'Wake up, baby. I’m here.' In the eulogy, she often talked directly to her husband, as though he were standing at her side: 'The little bit of hope I had that you would come back to life just to say "Goodbye" or just to say "I love you" one more time had left. I was lost. I’m still lost.'"

From "Rhapsody for a Boy in Blue" by Maureen Dowd (NYT).

To read more about that March 1, 1954 incident, here's the Wikipedia article. Excerpt: "The assailants were arrested, tried and convicted in federal court, and given long sentences, amounting to life imprisonment. In 1978 and 1979, their sentences were commuted by President Jimmy Carter."

And from "Rafael Cancel Miranda, Gunman in ’54 Attack on Congress, Dies at 89/He and three others opened fire on a crowded House chamber in the cause of Puerto Rican independence. Some saw him as a terrorist, others as a hero" (NYT, March 3, 2020):

“Can you imagine us thinking we could overthrow the U.S. government with little pistols?” he told The Militant. “I wish I could!” 

He referred to the attack as “an armed demonstration.” 

“We knew that if we went with signs, we weren’t going to get attention,” he said.